Page 1 of 8
This is Natalie, and you’re listening to the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. This is episode 44, 10 thoughts that get you hired.
Hey, there. Welcome to the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. I’m your host, Natalie Fisher. I’m a certified career mindset coach who also happens to want to skip all the BS and get to what it really takes to create real results for you in your career. On this podcast, you will create real mindset shifts that will lead to big results and big changes in your career and your income. No fluff here. If you want to get a six-figure job you love and create real concrete results in your industry and make a real impact, you’re in the right place. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Hello. Welcome to the podcast. So I just got off a client call, super excited to share all the wins. She’s getting a ton of interviews simply by doing what I’m going to teach you today. And if you’re getting benefit from this podcast, and you still haven’t gotten that job you want, you’re still not making the money you want, but you’ve been resonating with the podcast, you really need to sign up to work with me because that is a whole new experience. If you think the podcast is great and you’re getting a lot of value, you have no idea. It’s going to blow your mind. So listen at the end to see how you can work with me. But I definitely recommend that if you’re serious about this, you get some serious, committed help so that you basically can’t fail.
All right. So into today’s topic. So thoughts for getting hired, thoughts for crushing your interview. I’m all about the mindset. And recently, I was doing some review of all my clients and the things that they start thinking, and how once things start taking off for them and the power of your thoughts. And I want to share with you some examples, give you some contrast of what you might be thinking now, how powerful this is, and how you can apply it, so that you can instantly change the way that you feel, which is pretty insane. If you don’t know, you can do this, I’m going to show you how today. But also just see how a little bit at a time is what’s actually going to create the longterm results.
And so you’ve been thinking the same thoughts for a long time, like a program that you’ve had running in your head on autopilot, that most of us are not aware of. And if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you might be more aware of your thoughts now, but I know that I wasn’t for the majority of my life. I had no idea what I was thinking. And now that I do, I’ve just been so much in more control of what I’m able to do.
And so what often happens is that in the context of the job search process and getting a new job, having a conversation where you need to advocate for yourself, where you want to get a certain result, because really, these conversations an interview, a raise conversation, a negotiation, any conversation where you’re advocating for yourself to get a promotion, to get a job, selling yourself, these conversations are the ones that make you hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout your career. And mastering them is the one thing that we don’t pay enough attention to doing.
And because of that, we think that being good at what we do should be enough, but it’s not. Because if that were the case, everybody who was good at what they do would be making the money they deserve, and they’d have the job that they wanted. But this is the missing piece.
So the example that I’ll start with are the un-useful thoughts that we have. So everybody has un-useful thoughts and some of them are very common, before the interview process, about the job hunt. And we all have them, and that’s why we don’t have the result that we want. So we know it’s going to be an un-useful thing because it’s going to make you feel bad. It’s going to make you feel a feeling that doesn’t fuel you to get what you are going… Ultimately working towards. It doesn’t fuel you towards that right direction.
So examples of thoughts that don’t fuel you in this scenario, very common ones might be, “I hope they like me.” Sounds pretty innocent. Right? I hope they like me. But thinking that implies that there’s a
 
Page 2 of 8
chance they might not like you. And then our brain likes to go to worst case scenario, and it doesn’t produce anything good from worst case scenario. So I hope they like me is a toxic thought. Because it invites doubt. Because it’s what if they don’t like me?
Another one is, “There are so many other candidates who are more qualified than me.” And this is a thought that might be offered to you by a recruiter or by the hiring manager or by the company. I’ve heard that said a lot of times. They’re like, “Oh, well, we had so many other great candidates.” And so you might pick that up and start thinking it and then start unconsciously comparing yourself, and being like, “Oh, well, I’m probably not as good as them. They probably have all the boxes checked.” Again, in the theme of going to worst case scenario. Or I don’t have experience with this specific thing. You might think, “Oh no, on the job description, it said that I needed this experience was an asset. And I don’t have that. Someone else is probably going to have that.” And you end up going into this spiral of, “Uh-oh. What if they ask me about it? I don’t really know what to say. I don’t really have it.” And it leads back to you and self-consciousness and doubt, and that’s what’s happening.
Another one is, “I might not be what they’re looking for. What if I’m not what they’re looking for? What if I’m not even sure what to say when they ask me something that I might not know?” All of these thoughts, first of all, they’re focused on you. They’re very self-doubting. And they make you feel, if I’m guessing correctly, they make you feel pressured, stressed, tense, nervous, anxiety, insecurity. It might make you feel like you want to take an antianxiety pill or some relaxant to help you deal with the situation, have a glass of wine. They make you feel like before you show up for this conversation, thinking this way, that you’re not going to be able to handle it in the most powerful way that you could. Because you’re thinking these thoughts. Not because you’re not capable, but just because you’re choosing to focus your brain on these things.
So why does this happen? Because our thoughts cause how we feel. So when you think these things, you’re causing the feelings in your body. And so when you’re causing yourself to feel nervous, stressed, anxiety, fearful, how does that actually allow you to show up?
And so what we do to try to counteract this, when we don’t know how this works, is we try to solve it with more action. We think, “I need to prepare more. I need to take another mock interview. I need to do more preparing. I need to research more potential interview answers.” I need to do more, more, more. And then you’re taking action from this empty place because it’s never going to be enough. You could prepare for days, and then still show up and think, “I hope they like me. Uh-oh.” And then one sign of them showing that they might not like you, giving you some look or something that doesn’t even mean anything, but you’ll interpret it that way because you’re thinking, “Uh-oh. There’s probably better people than me. I’m not smart enough.” You’re going to interpret whatever happens in that way because that’s what your brain is afraid of. And that’s how you’re going to show up, no matter how much preparing you do.
And so that’s why it doesn’t work because we can’t out-act a negative thought or belief that we have. We can’t take enough action to cover that up. If we believe these negative beliefs or… I don’t want to call them negative. They’re just not useful beliefs. If we believe that someone else is smarter than us, which yeah, there’s always going to be smarter people in the world. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get this job.
So we can’t out-act the negative thought or belief that we’re having. It’s just not possible. You can try. I’ve had clients, they’ve prepared for days and still not been able to nail the interview because they’re having a negative thought about themselves in the interview that throws them off.
And no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, we can waste a lot of energy going nowhere, trying to out-act our negative programming. So if you have a bunch of programs open on your computer
 
Page 3 of 8
or your iPhone or whatever, and they’re taking up a lot of battery power, or they’re taking up a lot of memory space, you can’t just open a bunch of new programs and try to erase the old ones. The old ones are still going to be there in the background. They’re still going to be slowing down the computer. They’re still going to be taking up space on the hard drive. We have to clean those out first. We have to look at them. We have to take care of that first, before we can actually replace them with new things. And we can’t just run it for longer, make it work harder, and then expect it to solve the problem.
So what we’re basically trying to do. And then what ultimately happens is we get really frustrated. We get frustrated about the process. We get bitter about the process. We start to dread interviews. We start to go on them without having the success that we want because we keep showing up in the same way. And we just keep getting frustrated with the results that we’re getting. And we think that it’s… We just want to blame the external world. And we’re like, “Well, it’s not fair. I don’t have this experience, so I can’t get this job. The hiring managers don’t give me a chance. They don’t like me. I’m not good at selling myself.” That’s where you’re taking the responsibility yourself, at least, but it’s still not a helpful belief. That’s another belief you have. If you go into the interview and you’re like, “I’m not good at selling myself,” how do you think you’re going to show up? How does that feel, and how do you think you’re going to show up?
So we have to look at this before we can actually change it. And that is the root cause of why you don’t have the result that you want is because of this unconscious mental programming, and that’s what a coach does. They’ll point that out for you because you don’t know you have it. My clients, they have no idea. And I’m the same because I have a coach, and I found my own path to success through somebody showing me what I was doing that wasn’t working for me. They pointed it out and they’re like, “This is why you’re getting this result.” I’m like, “Oh, okay, thank you.” And then I could take action from there. And then I could build on the success.
And it’s very difficult for us to see this on our own. Especially if we haven’t been doing this work for a long time. If we haven’t been aware of what we’re thinking, then it’s going to be nearly impossible to see our own blind spots and our own limitations. That’s so how it is. It’s like trying to read a label, and you’re sitting inside of the jar, and you’re trying to read the label on the outside. And the label’s upside down, it’s backwards, it’s blurry, but a coach can see the label because they’re looking right at it. They can just read it to you. So that’s how I like to describe coaching because it just speeds everything up. And if you can read the label, you know what you need to do. You have so much more information and awareness.
So for this podcast, I’m going to give you some alternative things to think that are going to be so much more useful going into your interview. So the first step is you have to be looking at what you’re thinking now and why that’s creating what you have now. And then we can look at the new alternative beliefs and thoughts that will help.
So examples of these are, first one is, “This is a meeting, nothing more than a conversation to see if there’s a mutual fit here for both of us.” And this is a pressure-reducing thought, I find, because it makes the playing field equal and it takes the pressure off you. It also positions you as a high value candidate who’s just as much in control of looking for what will work for you as what will work for them. So it’s a non-needy thought, and it’s a mutually beneficial thought. And it positions you as a high value candidate. But ask yourself how does that feel for you because each one is going to land differently with each person.
Thought number two, “I have value to offer.” This thought brings the value that you have to the surface in your mind. And think about that. When you’re focusing on your value versus thinking about I hope they like me, inviting all this doubt in, basically, instead of thinking I have value to offer, do you feel that difference there? Because when you believe that you have value to offer, you’re able to approach the interview from a giving space instead of a taking space, instead of a doubtful, self-conscious space. And
 
Page 4 of 8
when that’s combined with genuinely wanting to find a mutual fit and the right environment to share your value in, that creates the balance that’s needed for a successful interview.
Thought number three, “I’m interested to see how I can best help them,” genuinely wondering how your skills, what you do, who you are matches up to what they are trying to accomplish. And this generates the feelings of curiosity. So, you can now get curious about how the value that you offer aligns with what they want to do. And then this can lead you to asking great questions, getting them thinking about what they are really trying to do and opening up great discussion, and helping you see how you do align with what they do and even build confidence for yourself during the interview that you really can help them. And that’s a really attractive quality in a candidate.
Thought number four, “An interview is a human conversation that not everyone gets the chance to have.” So not everyone gets invited to an interview. We discount the fact so often, the getting the interview in the first place is a huge win in itself. A lot of job applications get submitted and very, very few out of those get interviewed. Not everyone gets the interview. And out of all the applicants, if you got an interview, that already means you have value to offer. So I want you to say to yourself that if you’ve already been getting interviews, you’ve already proven yourself capable, assuming everything on your resume is true.
Thought five, “The interview will go as it’s meant to.” So when you have a calm sense of confidence within yourself where you’re like, okay, it’s just going to go how it’s meant to go. I’m going to show up and do my part. And you’re not stressing out, having over-prepared, you’ll have a deeper access to your own genius. So when you can relieve pressure, you can access the better part of your brain. You’ll be able to access the answers that you want. You’ll be able to access the information that you know you have, from a calm place versus a panicked, frantic, oh my God, what if I don’t know place.
Thought number six, “When they asked me something I don’t know, I’ll handle it.” So this was a very key one for one of my clients, and he really used it super effectively. And so, chances are that they’re going to ask you something you don’t know. And the trick is not to get thrown off by this. If you were having a conversation with a friend or a colleague, and there was something that you didn’t know, how would you handle that? You probably wouldn’t immediately make it mean that you were stupid or that you should have known. But in interviews, we tend to think that we need to have 100% of the answers all the time or we fail, and that’s not true.
And it can show up, as I’ve spoken with hiring managers, when someone doesn’t know an answer to a question, it can show up as overcompensating and trying too hard. And that hurts the candidate in the end. So reminding yourself that you can still do a great job in this role, you can still maintain your confidence of being able to do the role and be the right person for the role, even if you might not have a specific answer to every single question. Even if you didn’t know something. They are actually looking to discover the big picture of who you are. How do you handle something that you don’t know? Do you get all panicked and freaked out? Or are you cool about it because you know that you can’t possibly know everything?
That’s more important. That’s more important for them to know than it is for you to have that answer in the moment. So remember, they’re looking for the big picture of who you are, not every little nitty-gritty piece of information that you may or may not have in that one moment.
Thought number seven, “This is an opportunity to connect with some new people.” So no matter what path you’re on, you’re on the right path if you’re in that interview, by ultimately having the result of the interview in the first place. And you get to have the experience of this interview, no matter what the outcome is. So you’ll be able to learn something about yourself, about the interviewing process, and about your ability to think and feel during an interview and how you handle each situation. So the
 
Page 5 of 8
interview is never a waste of time, even if you don’t get the job, because there’s always gold to be learned from each experience.
So this is an opportunity to connect with some new people was one that I really used for myself. And I ended up having a lot of fun connecting with these new people, sharing with them, asking them questions, talking to them about what they enjoyed. And a lot of the times, I think that’s probably what led me to having a fun interview experience. But everybody’s going to have a different set of thoughts that’s going to work for them. And as a coach, that’s what I hope you figure out.
So thought number eight, “I’m assessing whether this company enroll is a fit for my longterm career goals.” So this is a really high value candidate thought because high value candidates, confident people, people who believe in their value, will always be looking out for whether or not this is a fit for them longterm, as well as short-term, as well as looking for how they can benefit the company with what they can contribute, how they can add value. They’re also looking for if this is aligned with what they want longterm and how that might look. So when an interviewer senses that the candidate’s looking after their own interests, as well as looking out for how they can help the company and how they can add the most value, this increases the perceived value of the candidate, because high value, self-confident people are looking to create win-win scenarios.
So needy would be like, “I only care about what you want, and I’ll do whatever you want.” And that turns people off because we don’t want that. And I did an interview with my friend hiring manager, Adam, and he speaks about that, where he’s like, “I want the candidate to know what they want.” And so we make the mistake of thinking that we want to just please everybody and be like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I can do whatever you need.” But it’s just as much about what you need than what they need. So we want to create a win-win, and we want them to feel that.
Thought number nine, “If it’s right, great. If it’s not, equally great.” So this is a thought that helps you remove the attachment and the pressure that comes from the outcome. Because hiring managers can feel when someone is very attached to the outcome, this can translate to needy, desperate energy and cause them not to want to move you forward.
So I’ve been in conversations with hiring managers and sometimes one of their comments will be, “She was just feeling really desperate. I picked up that vibe, and I felt bad for her because even though her answers were good, I could just tell she really needed this to work out. And we couldn’t hire her based on that.” And so, because of that, people might overcompensate, they might look like they’re trying too hard, and they just come from that desperate energy.
So it’s just not something that people want to hire. They don’t want to hire somebody who really, really needs it so badly. They might feel sorry for the person. They might feel bad for them. They might try to give them other resource, they might give them other jobs to apply for, but they’re not going to likely hire them. That’s just how it normally goes because that energy is repelling.
Thought number 10, “I don’t need 100% on this test to pass it.” So a huge trap that candidates fall into is called the perfectionist fantasy, where they believe that they can have 100% answers to every single question, every single time. And when they miss one question or don’t have the answer, they often get derailed. Or if they’ve answered the question, then they don’t think they did it perfectly, they will get derailed. And then they will make it mean something about them and their ability, and then it can change the interview energy, and then it can go downhill from there. And that could have been the moment that you actually blew the opportunity. It could have been going fine up until then. So even though lots of times people have been hired without having all the answers to every single question, somehow we still get stuck in believing this.
 
Page 6 of 8
And sometimes, interviewers are just throwing curve balls for fun. They’re like, “I wonder how they’ll handle this one.” And sometimes they’ve even said, “That’s okay. I would never expect you to know that. That’s just a trick question.” So we just have to drop the fact that we could expect ourselves to have all of the answers. Because we never know what’s going to be on the test, and we never need 100% on any test to pass. It’s normally 80%, 70% sometimes, the highest need for a pass. But it’s just a ridiculous expectation that we put on ourselves, and it’s not fair to you if you’re doing that. And it’s often unconscious.
So those are your 10 thoughts. Okay. And there’s a ton more I have inside my program. There’s a huge list because I ask every single one of my clients what their defining thought was after they get their results. So I have over 100. I think some of them are the same, but this is just a sneak peak. Because when you know that your thoughts cause your feelings, you can choose intentionally how you want to think about your interview. And then when you know how you want to feel and think about it, you get to show up differently. So think about how these thoughts make you feel. Think about the ones that I talked about in the beginning of the podcast, the ones that I’ve just talked about now, and see how it feels differently to you when you’re thinking a different thought, and how you might feel more confident versus not good enough.
And you are where your attention is. So if your attention is on yourself and your doubts and your fears, then you’re going to show up in that place. And that’s not an attractive thing. We don’t want to hire the person who’s feeling sorry for themselves or doubting themselves or super nervous about whether or not they can speak or answer or do anything. And that’s an exaggeration, but it shows up in all different nuanced ways. And so my job is to help my clients feel confident and super confident that they can create those feelings at the time when they need to in the moment. That’s my specialty.
And what they create is they end up feeling in control of the process. They feel like they’re in complete control of what they think at any given moment. In the interview, they’re laser focused exactly where they need to be, and therefore they feel in control of their own success. They feel in control of how to move forward and how to handle each situation, so when they get a question they don’t know, or after the interview, what steps to take exactly what to do, they feel in control of what they believe in order to create the actual result they want, no matter what. They no longer feel at the mercy of whatever happens or whatever jobs are out there, or whatever postings are out there or whatever somebody says. They no longer believe that the results are outside of their control. They feel 100% in control of this process.
And even if you don’t get a job offer from a particular interview, it doesn’t matter because you feel in full belief and full confidence that your path to get there is laid out, and you know the exact steps you’re taking, and you know the direction you’re going. And they feel grounded and certain. And being able to control how you think and feel creates the results that you want. And that is the end.
Thanks for tuning into this episode. So for the reviews, I have been getting some questions as to whether or not I’m still doing the free gift for the reviews and the answer is absolutely. So what you’re going to get, if you leave me a review is the 50 examples story guide. So basically, I break down examples, very concretely in detail of my clients and my own, of how we have answered interview questions, stories, and how those stories have connected with somebody in a way that makes them actually want to hire you. So there’s more to the story than just the S-A-R-I, the SARI or the STAR formula. There’s more to it than that. And that is just a structure that’s very helpful, so that you can keep in mind how you’re going through the story, but there’s so much more to telling a compelling story in an interview or in any situation where you want to persuade somebody, or you want to have somebody thinking a certain thought about you, and how you position that story is everything.
 
Page 7 of 8
So in that guide, I send it to you. You leave me a review. You send me the screenshot of the review to my email, natalie@asknataliefisher.com. And I will give you that PDF in your email.
So just to clear that up, and also we are going to keep doing the testimonial snippets of my clients and what they’ve had to say at the end of the episode, so hang on to hear that. And I will be talking a bit more about my group online program, The 6-Figure Career Code, where we’re going to talk about every single mindset step and strategic step that it takes to get into a six-figure role. So even if you’re not even there, not even close to a six-figure role yet, and you feel like maybe that’s a bit far away for me, this is going to give you the foundational steps, the fundamentals, everything you need to believe fully that you’re going to get there.
So I will be talking a bit more about that. It’s going to incorporate the components that I have here on my podcast. And we’re just going to go really deep, apply them, have step-by-step for them. And you will have a chance to sign up for that in the upcoming months. So if you hear me talking about that, that’s what it is.
All right. So that’s coming out in August, and I will be having a launch for that. And we will be talking all about how you can join and how you can join me. And if you’re getting value from this podcast, I would seriously consider signing up for this because it’s everything you’re going to need. And as you know, I like to be very thorough and go very deep on what I teach, and like to leave no stone unturned, no question unanswered. We go very specifically into each potential block that could happen along the way, every single combination of challenges, every limitation. And we just make sure that everybody crosses the finish line. So thank you so much again for listening, and I will talk to you next week. All right. Bye.
You helped me keep coming back to the fact that if there’s one thing I am an expert at, it’s research. That’s my resourcefulness. That’s my curiosity. Those are my strengths. But that really helped me because then I could finally shift gears to just thinking about these interviews as I’m meeting a new teammate, I’m meeting a new colleague, and I’m genuinely curious about who they are, what they’re up to, and what they need help with, which is exactly what I’ve been doing as a research specialist, consulting with all of these different investigators and teams on getting protocols up and running and troubleshooting this issue and that. And so, then I felt more like I was in my professional expert mode, and it circumvented that now I’ve really got to perform, now I’ve got to sell myself thought that would trigger the self doubt. That helped a lot.
So I was just like, why am I missing this piece? I know these things because I coach teachers, and I know it’s all about mindset and how you show up. You can be very skilled, but if you don’t show up a certain way, especially when it comes to leading schools, it’s all about having charisma and passion. And I have all these things, and I just wasn’t showing up as myself because the fear would just take over. [crosstalk 00:30:16] And that’s what would happen.
Yeah. It’s going great, I guess. So I’m working on a NLP project. NLP is natural language processing. It’s a particular field of data science. And I basically have to build a tool for automatic summarization of contributions of people. We have a platform where we collect viewpoints of people about a particular subject, like when the government wants to have the mind of the population about a particular subject, I don’t know, [inaudible 00:31:01] okay, we have this platform where people come and give reviews. And currently, an analyst are reading it manually, and they are summarizing it manually. And what I have to do is to build an artificial intelligent tool to do it automatically.
So yeah, I like it. I love it because it is challenging, and I will help people save a lot of time when the project will be at the end. If it’s a success, it will be very beneficial for all the people who are working on this platform. And yeah, that’s it. I [inaudible 00:31:47] and it’s a new… It’s something very… It’s a new
 
Page 8 of 8
project in the company. So I’m starting from the beginning, and yeah, it’s exciting. [crosstalk 00:32:00] yeah.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. If you’re ready to dive deeper into your career mindset and start creating bigger, more impactful results in your career, join me at www.nataliefisher.ca/getstarted. I’ll see you over there.